What is the path forward for Gentoo sparc users with the upcoming udev-18* unmasking? I have a sparc running fine under udev164-r2 without an initramfs, but with separate /var and /usr. It's not clear to me if silo supports initramfs. Is the right path to follow something like the initrd described by Brant Williams? Is genkernel's ability to make initramfs going to work for sparc as it does in other arches or is dracut the way here? Alternatively, is grub2 instead of silo the way to go? (I tried building grub2 and all the dependencies build, but not grub-2.00_beta3-r2 itself.) I am hoping the solution isn't "re-adjust your file system to put everything under /" or to have to manually create an initramfs, e.g., via something like NeddySeagoon's Rough Guide or manual system configuration suggested elsewhere, not that they are bad in and of themselves, just that I'm looking for the least possible fuss. Just wondering which way to focus my energies.

Silo definitely allows you to use kernels with an initramfs ... for instance sparc32 kernels are too large these days to compile without modules. Anyhow all SILO is doing is passing the location of the initramfs in ram to the kernel which actually does the loading itself.